This invention is related to the manipulation of a body of information represented by sets of chronologically ordered data and, in particular, to the indirect manipulation of a secondary set or sets of data through manipulation of a primary set or sets of data that is/are temporally related to the secondary set or sets of data and whose elements can be aligned with those of the secondary set or sets of data. Most particularly, the invention is related to the indirect manipulation of audio or audio-visual data using text data that can be related to the audio or audio-visual data.
It is desirable to be able to manipulate a body of information in a variety of ways--such as summarizing, rearranging, editing, selectively accessing or searching the body of information--to facilitate digestion of the content of the body of information by users. For example, the body of information could be a videotape of a temporal event (i.e., an action or actions that occur over a period of time). It is useful to be able to summarize the content of the videotape (particularly if it is long), access content occurring at a particular time in the videotape, search for particular content in the videotape, or rearrange or otherwise edit the content of the videotape.
A body of information is typically represented as a set or sets of data. The data can be in different forms (e.g., digital or analog) and of different types (e.g., audio, video, text). A body of information can oftentimes be represented in different ways by related sets of data of different forms and/or types. For example, a temporal event can be represented by a videotape having analog data, digital data, or both. Additionally, the videotape can include video data, audio data and text data, each type of data describing actions that occur at particular times during the event.
Enabling a particular body of information to be easily manipulated in a manner that suits the ends of particular users can be problematic. The recent explosive growth in the amount of information that is available digitally provides an illustration of the problem: trying to get just an overview of a large body of digital information can be overwhelming, and attempting to find specific material within the body of information can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. Thus, there is a need generally for methods and systems for enabling bodies of information--and, in particular, bodies of digital information--to be easily and flexibly manipulated.